May 29 Board of Governors Tweetcap

Tuesday, May 29’s board meeting was a casual one, held in a boardroom in the Michael Williams Building, rather than the typical location within the Senate Chambers.

Still, an important range of topics were discussed.

Next is a presentation from Dr. Sybil Seitzinger — head of the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions at UVic. Seitzinger starts by reiterating the global and fossil-fuel-caused nature of climate change.

First, Dr. Sybil Seitzinger gave an update presentation on the work done at the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS), an institution led and housed by the University of Victoria in collaboration with the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and the University of Northern British Columbia.

Created in 2008 with an endowment from the B.C. Ministry of the Environment, PICS focuses on climate change research and solutions, a topic with global and local repercussions.

Seitzinger starts by showing a chart that shows that from 1948-2012, Canada is warming at twice the global average. "We need to be particularly attentive to this issue," Seitzinger says, and need to make our own contributions to the problem.

Seitzinger informed the board that PICS had recently undergone planning for a new strategic framework to last until 2022, with a revised mandate that would inform the institute’s direction.

PICS's revised mandate: Produce leading climate solutions research that is actively used by decision-makers to develop effective mitigation and adaptation policies and actions. PICS has a global remit but a focus on B.C.

After answering questions about PICS’s influence on campus, during which UVic President Jamie Cassels mentioned the Peter B. Gustavson School of Business’s recent achievement of becoming carbon neutral, the torch was passed to the Vice-President of External Relations Carmen Charette.

External Relations update: UVic website is getting re-designed, soon, and last touches are being put on an advertising campaign (which is also a reputation campaign, too) — we can expect reports from the last advertising campaign at next month's Board Meeting.

Both Charette and Chancellor Shelagh Rogers spoke to how successful the previous UVic advertising campaign had been, and said that UVic’s anecdotal reputation was certainly high.

Reputational advancement has been a key agenda item for the current UVic administration, and has been covered in more detail in previous issues by our writer Emily Fagan. You can read her story here.

Out of the President's report — into the finances. External audit report was a very positive and good audit — Gayle Gorrill, Vice-President Finance and Operations, says a more detailed report can be expected in June.

The meeting continued with a financial report from Vice-President of Finance and Operations Gayle Gorrill, who spoke positively of UVic’s recent external audit. The results can be found here: I’d try summing them up for you, but you really don’t want that at all.

And Gorrill re-iterates that a more detailed report will come in June. Thank goodness I won't be around to try and understand that. If any economists would like to be Editor-in-Chief for that, please give me an email.

Finally, the board approved the 2018–2023 Strategic Framework, which was voted on and passed a few weeks ago by the Senate. The Framework articulates UVic’s vision and values in the years to come, focusing on six priorities: the university strives to “cultivate an extraordinary academic environment, advance research excellence and impact, intensify dynamic learning, foster respect and reconciliation, promote sustainable futures, and engage locally and globally.”